West Brom's Steve Clarke feeling the pressure ahead of Mourinho reunion

Steve Clarke admits that he is as under pressure as the next Premier League boss to stop "the vultures circling".

Albion's head coach, who is trying to improve on a best- yet Premier League finish for the club of eighth last season, admits that he is already beating the average survival rate among his top-flight contemporaries.

Clarke, appointed in June last year, reckons most of his colleagues do well to last little more than a year these days.

But it is a fact of life he accepts in the Premier League of today and sends him to a reunion with Jose Mourinho on Saturday knowing the pressure for results never lifts.

"People who own a club are entitled to do what they want. Sometimes there are some human casualties," says Clarke.

"Now, if you get two years, you've done well. The average time for a manager is 14 or 15 months. You have to learn to deal with it.

"They don't run the club just to have two or three good years in the Premier League. They run it to sustain it over a number of years."

That is an endorsement of his chairman Jeremy Peace's strict modus operandi at The Hawthorns. Clarke buys into the scheme, although not without occasionally feeling the same pangs as some supporters.

He added: "I'm not going to say you don't get some frustration when you see a club you think are at a similar level spending more than you. But you come in with your eyes wide open.

"We've already lost a couple of managers. And this is before you're really into the meat of the season.

"You are sitting on the sidelines and you know that the vultures are starting to circle. We need to start winning games."

Clarke's Stamford Bridge reunion with Mourinho on Saturday offers him another chance to step out of his mentor's shadow.

He was certainly inspired by the "Special One" when they first teamed up in 2004 but would love nothing more than for his Baggies team to repeat their Old Trafford wonder show and down another of the Premier League's elite.

Despite Clarke's subsequent coaching assignments at Liverpool and West Ham, and his first spell in the No.1 post which The Hawthorns job represents, he is still defined by those whirlwind years during Mourinho's first spell at Chelsea.

The Portuguese maestro watched Clarke coaching the youth team for five minutes and, in one of those typical flourishes, decided the quietly-spoken Scot was the man for him. The pair have been close ever since and regularly exchange telephone conversations.

Saturday, however, sees them go toe-to-toe – Mourinho still holding the aces but wary that Clarke has already played a winning hand against United.

There won't be much time for socialising, says Clarke.

"In all my time working with him, I've seen him have just two sips of red wine," he admitted. "Hopefully, we will get a chance to have a quick five minutes.

"Certainly Mourinho was one of my mentors. It was good for me at that time in my career. He gave me good ideas, showed me a different way to work – a way of working which was more global. You could do everything on the pitch within the training session: The tactical, technical, physical, psychological.

"More contact, more possession, more technical exercises with the ball. There was less separate running, more strategic running.

"I don't think I've copied Jose's style. I'm very different, quiet. I can be quite reserved, definitely not a shouter."